ClearPix in the clear? On July 21, the US House of Representatives Judiciary Subcommittee voted 18-9 in favor of the "Family Movie Act." Passage by the full House, Senate, and President would free manufacturers of DVD filtering technology (such as ClearPlay, Inc.) from legal consequences as a result of violating movie industry copyrights. ClearPlay and other companies offering "clean up" technology for feature films have been criticized by members of the Directors Guild of America for violating the sanctity of cinematic art.

HDTV Forum 2004 will be bigger and better than last year's inaugural event, thanks to the addition of dozens of heavyweights from a cross-section of participating industries. Scheduled for August 24&ndash;26 at the Westin Century Plaza in Los Angeles, the theme of this year's confab is "Accelerating the HDTV Transition."

If you're the type who can't decide among all the disc formats (SACD, DVD-Video, DVD-Audio, CD, MP3-encoded CD, and Laserdisc), Integra has just announced a six-disc DVD changer that's compatible with nearly every disc format on the planet. (Sorry, Laserdisc fans, but Integra didn't include compatibility with those venerable old 12-inch movie discs. Although you won't be able to watch your old disc collection in the new Integra changer, those discs still make great serving platters!) Integra's DPC-8.5 is built around a six-disc carousel tray that incorporates a unique blue illumination light, making it easier to see what's in the tray when the room lights are down low and you're trying to impress that special someone.

Ever had trouble matching a subwoofer to your main speakers and the room? Ever wonder, if Reese's can make peanut butter cups with the peanut butter on the outside, why can't someone make a subwoofer that's intelligent enough to make its own adjustments? If you have, then you can spend your life believing that Thiel Audio created their new SmartSub family of subwoofer products just for you. (The remainder of us will simply admire the technology in this collection that includes four new powered subwoofers, a SmartSub Integrator, and a pair of passive crossovers.)

The PE8700 DLP projector from BenQ has to qualify as the surprise product of early 2004. The first surprise is that it's made by a company I'd barely heard of before late last year. But with a claimed 13,000 employees worldwide, BenQ isn't exactly small. Its main corporate headquarters are in Taiwan, where the PE8700 is built.

The first thing my wife told me when I returned from the Consumer Electronics Show in January was that our eight-year-old garage-door opener was broken. When it still produced a banshee-like screech after a liberal dose of WD-40 - the universal cure-all for ailing mechanical devices - I decided we needed a new opener.